Exit Kingdom

façades in the country.
    In the front courtyard are planted many varieties of cactus and, at their bases, herb gardens in thick verdant patches. There is a full community here, and as the two menenter, they are greeted
with serene nods by the residents: plainly dressed men and women who are carrying baskets of tomatoes or digging in the earth with hoes or stitching up child-sized overalls.
    How many are you? Moses asks the woman.
    But the woman doesn’t answer. Instead, she puts her fingers to her lips and shakes her head apologetically.
    You don’t talk, Moses says. That’s allright. Mostly palaver’ll just get you in trouble. That’s been my experience anyhow.
    Then Moses comprehends the weighty silence of the place. He realizes that no one is saying anything.
    Hold on a minute. It ain’t just you, is it? It’s everybody here? You
could
speak if you wanted to, but you opt not to. Is that the thing?
    Again the woman holds up her hands apologetically and invitesthe two brothers to follow her through the huge, arching mesquite doors and into the church itself.
    White dove of the desert. Just beyond the threshold into the Narthex, the air cools considerably, as though God were a force of balance where all things hot become cool, all things cold become
warm, and good and evil are meted out as on a swaying balance that always finds itself, eventually,level. Rows of wooden pews with arching backs line the nave, and some silent supplicants sit in
individual prayer with heads bowed on folded hands. Were there whispers of devotion, they would reach high into the octagonal domes painted with robed angels – but instead there are only
shuffling echoes and the aching sound of wood creaking beneath faithful bodies.
    At the cross aisle, the womangestures at them to wait, and they do, casting their gazes upwards to the dome and all around. Candles being scarce, homemade torches illuminate the interior with
flickering movement like breathing. Could you read human circumstances like a living tarot, you might make something of the arrangement: Moses on the right, Abraham on the left, fixed like soiled
anchors holding true to their resolution.There they are, epistle and gospel, parallel at the transept. At Moses’ side the alcove contains a white-gowned Virgin Mary, haloed and glorious,
encircled by figures who would admire her – force of the distinctly feminine – and, yes, Moses would pay homage at her feet. The phoenix exquisiteness of girls. And then, in the
opposite alcove, Abraham’s side, is the supine statue of an entombedman, San Xavier himself, shrouded in blue robes. A figure of recumbent death, made holy by slaughter and sacrifice.
    And so would death and purity enclose Moses’ journeys like cards from a mystical deck laid on either side of his seeker.
    As they wait, the woman moves towards the front of the church where, in the apse, an emaciated bald man kneels in a brown robe. She does not interrupthim but instead stands where he will see
her when he looks up from his prayers. He smiles gently at her, and when she nods her head in their direction, the man turns and his sad eyes fall on the brothers Abraham and Moses Todd. The smile
persists on his face, faltering only slightly as Moses perceives it.
    The thin monk walks down the steps, leaving the woman behind him at the altar, andgestures for the brothers to follow him. He leads them through a door and past a large courtyard where other
residents of the mission are tending to a large vegetable garden. A smell of cooking herbs wafts through the desert air from a long low adobe structure on the other side of the courtyard.
    Abraham and Moses follow him to a small domicile separate from the other buildings in the complex.Inside there is a simple cot and a table with two chairs. The monk closes the door behind them
and gestures for them to sit in the chairs.
    Please, sit, he says.
    You talk? Moses asks.
    I do. As an order we’ve taken a vow of silence, but the times warrant exception in the case of welcoming guests.
    Much appreciated, Moses replies.
    Yeah, Abraham says, I ain’t much for miming.

    I’m Moses Todd, and this is my brother Abraham.
    My name is Ignatius, says the monk. If you mean us no harm, you are welcome to stay.
    Moses notices that the monk is looking at Abraham’s busted lip, bruised face and half-shut eye from when he got beat up on in the desert two nights before.
    I know we look somewhat raggedy, friar, Moses says,